he writes her poems about her eyes and the sum of her, like her parts are books in a library he’s just getting around to.
i call her to me over a mirror my grandmother made me. she and i are naked in candlelight and dancing. when she laughs, the room echoes slightly. our witchy fingers loop around each other’s knuckles, form holes to see the faeries through. we lie awake in satin robes reading each other byron, laughing, doing shots whenever we fall in love with words.
he says she makes him feel like johnny cash. he acts as if she is an empty vault, already stolen from. he’s coming to save her from herself, fill up the lockboxes of her with his secrets so she can carry them safely.
she comes to me in a cricket. tells me a secret so that it can unwind in the air, in the way of cotton. it shifts into a sunbeam and is no more. together we sit in a comfortable silence and observe the rest of forgiveness. i hold her hand while she buries her nightmares. i understand why she cries when the mug drops. she knows how come a loud noise makes me flinch. we do not navigate around each other’s sore parts. we tend to them eagerly. hopefully. knowing a scorched ground can still bear fruit. we say: this is but a thumbprint to the rest of you, and i love all of you, and i will consume the darkness with my own teeth if it means helping you tear it out by the roots.
he says he loves her, he loves her, that she is a reborn star, or his galaxy, he has me read his work where she is a mountain that his thirsty palms go navigating. i blush at my own cliches in his handwriting. i can’t help it. when someone makes you wordless, you rely on old words. he tells me that she is his muse, he says i am too trusting of sappho, that the sun eats hearts like mine. she is a flower and i am a blush. he is a bold color. he says he’ll call her and she’ll come, the way that all dogs do when they’ve learned to trust.
and i kiss her and i say nothing. call her no angel or snowfall or winter rose, just by her name in the night when we are both alight and living, just by a single noise in the whiteness of breaking. i kiss her and i write her poetry about how she makes me feel like johnny cash, how i feel like a spirit, how i feel like a space station, how she is my star and my galaxy and i say sorry and she says that there are no new ideas under the sun, but they become new because they’re new ways to witness me. we lie awake and i say poetry is an old magic. she says, good. she says: well the spell is working. she says: let me prove to you that you’ve won. and she calls me and i come.
